Antiques Roadshow in Liverpool (and weird week)

Queueing for the Antiques Roadshow, St George's Hall, Liverpool

We went to St George's Hall the last time the Antiques Roadshow was in Liverpool. It was a lot of fun, even the queueing, both times. At least I managed to take some photos outside today!

We took a taxi down, as we thought it would be much too difficult to park anywhere particularly close, and I prefer to minimise my wheelchair travel as much as possible... Especially over cobblestones!



Dolphins on the base of a lamp post

When we arrived we noticed the queue was snaking up and over and down the steps in the front of St George's Hall. There was no way that we could manage that with the wheelchair, so John parked me at the bottom of the steps, and went to the back of the queue to ask the folks there to mark a place for us, and we would join behind them when they reached us.



Fun outside St George's Hall

Then someone saw me sitting in the wheelchair and offered their place in the line! They had decided not to wait any more, so decided to be kind to me. We explained we were happy enough to wait, and we didn't want to jump the queue. But the folks behind seemed happy enough for us to take the place of our benefactors, so we went for it.



Shortly afterwards a young chap approached us and asked if we knew that wheelchair users had a special entry, and didn't have to wait. At some point John had been to the front of the queue and asked, to be told that we had to queue like everyone else.

Well, that seemed fair enough to us, other than that we couldn't manage the steps for the queue, but John had sorted that in a way that seemed fair to us. But this young man was insistant, and even went back to check that there was a seperate wheelchair access. Came back to tell us, and accompanied us to the door. (Well, he walked around the outside of the queue, we cut across inside to avoid the cobblestones)

Once inside it was a labyrinth to find the lift! Up to the first floor, along more corridors until we reached the right level. Into the Great Hall, and oh, the ceiling, the stained glass windows, the statues, the marble set behind them, the moulded and coloured roundels - George and the Dragon, Liverpool coat of arms, the Liverbird. Not to mention the amazing chandeliers, suspended from moulded ships prows. I tried to take photos, but sadly the light just wasn't good enough.

Everyone was very kind. When we first entered the Great Hall one of the Roadshow crew fetched us the labels we needed (books, china and miscellaneous) so we were able to begin the individual queuing.

We went for china first, it was a pretty long wait, but in the wonderful surroundings, and with chatting with other folks in the queue, and watching things being set up for filming (suspect will be an item on slavery) the time went pretty fast. A note to self for next time - not a lot of folks took glass.

Followed up with a pretty short queue for Miscellaneous and then a somewhat longer one for Books. John was standing behind me in the Book queue (he had to push the chair) and thinking something along the lines of "there's a lot of people here, bit odd we haven't met anyone we know" and about 30 seconds later someone comes rushing up to me to say Hello!

Margaret, who I used to work with before I got ill. She was a bit surprised to see me in a wheelchair. She said she retired a couple of years ago. I knew exactly who she was, but simply could not remember her name when she greeted us. Think this is cognitive dissonance - Antiques Roadshow and (ex-)work don't mix in my mind. Unexpected juxtaposition.



As for the rest of the week it was all rather awful.

Monday got IB50 (EEEK!), but from Birkenhead not Liverpool, which worried me. Managed to get advice from some folks on email Lists that allayed some of my worries. And John called DWP in Birkenhead on Tuesday and found that dealing with the forms is centralized within areas rather than cities and towns now.

I re-joined the wonderful Benefits and Work. Took a look at their advice on filling IB50 in, and fell asleep...

Next morning (Wed I think) found I'd kicked the dregs of my glass over, splattered keyboard and screen, computer frozen and couldn't re-boot. EEEK again!

Kept trying to re-boot over next few days, finally somehow (not sure how!) managed to get to a screen that let me take the system back to how it was when last working. I am not going to try and install my (perfectly good otherwise) printer on this laptop again, as I think maybe that was the root of the problems.

At least I finished reading 3 books while I couldn't get computer to work.

But don't want to go through that again anytime soon!

Happy happy joy joy!

The Post is restored in Liverpool! :-) Local mail strike is over. I am beginning to get mail again. Only had boring stuff over the first couple of days post strike, but yesterday the good stuff began to arrive.

Before the postal strike I'd ordered a load of stuff. Including some Birth Certificates. Those arrived yesterday, and it turned out neither were related to me. Ah well, next time I'll try and check details better. Though to be honest, how likely is it to have two unrelated girls in the same town with the same name born within 12 months of each other? Probably common in Wales with a name of Davies!

Today's mail brought a belated (now VERY belated) birthday prezzie for John - "A Pig with Six Legs". To add to his several clouds and weather books.

And a great book on bag making - "making vintage bags".

But best of the bunch is a book of Gustave Dore's London engravings. Absolutely magic while also horrifying. Gothic and dark... And yet some parts of London are recognisable to me.

I think that I've only had around half of my book order so far... More fun to come, can't remember what I ordered now as it's so long ago. Will be fun seeing what arrives over the next few days. I do like getting book parcels! :-)

Spider v Wasp

John and I were sitting in our bedroom soon after mid day, when I looked out of the window and noticed a wasp had got tangled in the big spider's web outside the middle bay window. The wasp struggled and struggled, but couldn't get free.

Big fat spider comes out to take a look (usually would have appeared much sooner on a tremble of the web) and hung back a bit. Wasp went on struggling, possibly getting stuck down onto the web a bit more... Spider comes a bit closer and stops again, then advances on wasp, which redoubled its efforts and flew away when the spider was only about an inch from it.

Which left me wondering which would have walked away from the encounter if it had happened. Or would both of them ended up dead from stings?

Our Visitor

Brodie and I have spent a happy day together in bed. Well, me in bed and he shedding fur on the duvet cover. He is a very gentlemanly cat - not a scratcher at all. It's really fun to have a feline friend again. I hope that he enjoys his sojourn with us.



Brodie enjoying a nice rest

We have a Visitor for a few days!

Bwlchtocyn Nosegay

John went to Abersoch on Sunday to finish stowing the boat ready for winter. He had quite an exciting day, and brought me a little nosegay of flowers from our garden.

He and John managed to get the mast out and remove the ballast. After that he thought he'd go for a little row, as we hadn't managed to get the dinghy back up from the boatyard in August. Rowed round to Porth Bach where it was very quiet and the water was so warm that he went skinny dipping. All in all a good way to celebrate his 62nd birthday!



Lavender

John had driven straight to the beach, and had intended to drive up to the caravan and leave the car there before returning for the dinghy. But he found that the road was closed with the fire brigade and an ambulance in attendance. A very big motor boat was being towed down the hill by a tractor and they had jack-knifed. So John had a chat with one of the rescuers that he knew, and then walked up for some lunch. The driver of the tractor was the only person hurt, but it seems he escaped with minor cuts and bruises - a lucky escape.

Yesterday evening Helen and David came over and treated us to an Indian Takeaway as a late celebration of John's birthday. They are going to stay with a friend in Bristol for the rest of the week, so have left the third member of their household here with us as a visitor for a week.



Brodie